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304

PROGRESS OF RATIFICATION NORTH.

of the border States for the amendment, ratified on the sixteenth.1

Kansas, which at this time was contemplating the question of striking the word "white" from its constitution, followed West Virginia, ratifying two days later.2 Maine, the time of whose State election permitted it to be the first State to pass judgment on the Congressional plan of reconstruction, ratified on the nineteenth by an almost unanimous vote.3 Nevada adopted on the twenty-second; Missouri on the twenty-sixth,5 and Indiana on the twentyninth, the Democrats recording their usual objections. The legislature of the preceding year had submitted an amendment to the constitution striking out the word "white" as descriptive of electors. Minnesota, which at this time, by a small majority, rejected an amendment to its constitution granting impartial suffrage, ratified the national amendment on the first of February." Rhode

1 By a vote of 15 to 3 in the Senate and 43 to 11 in the House; see House and Senate Journal for January 16, 1867, and for the ratification, see Documentary History, II, p. 693.

2 January 18, 1867; see Documentary History, II, p. 697; see also the resolution of the Republican State Convention at Topeka, September 5, and of the National Union State Convention, September 20. The ratification by the Kansas House, January 10, 76 ayes, 7 nays; Senate, January 11, 23 ayes, no nays.

3 For the ratification by Maine, see Documentary History, II, p. 701. In the Senate, 30 ayes, no nays; in the House, 126 yeas, 12 nays; Journal, January 19.

4 Documentary History, II, p. 705. The ratification was by a direct party vote; 34 yeas and 4 nays in the House, January 11, 1867; Senate, 12 yeas and 3 nays, January 22, 1867.

5 Documentary History, II, p. 709; the vote in the House was 85 yeas, 34 nays, 14 absent; in the Senate, 26 yeas, 6 nays, 2 absent.

• Indiana ratified the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments; Senate, January 18, 1867, 30 ayes to 16 nays; House, January 23, 56 ayes to 36 nays. See the minority report in the House Journal, pp. 102-105, and the debates in Brevier's Legal Reports of 1867.

7 The vote was 24,479 for impartial suffrage and 28,794 against it. For the ratification of the fourteenth amendment, see Docu

Island on the seventh approved it with scarcely a dissenting vote.1 In Wisconsin, public sentiment was pronounced in favor of the abolition of "discriminations at the ballot box founded on property, birthplace, creed or color;" and the amendment was carried on the thirteenth of February.2

Pennsylvania, at this time, was somewhat agitated over a decision of its Supreme Court sustaining the right of public carriers to discriminate against persons of color.3 In the southern and southeastern portions of the State, and especially in the larger towns, where persons of color were in greatest number, there was no general disposition to grant them more than civil rights, but in the rural districts, and especially in the mountainous and northwestern portions of the State, public sentiment was more lenient. Pennsylvania ratified on the same day with Wisconsin. Michigan followed two days later. The mentary History, II, p. 717. House Journal, January 15, 1867, 40 ayes to 5 nays; in the Senate, 16 ayes to 5 nays.

1 For the ratification, see Id., p. 720.

2 For the ratification, see Id., p. 723; also the resolutions of the Republican State Convention at Madison, September 4, endorsing the amendment; and those of the Democratic Convention, September 11, disapproving the reconstruction policy of Congress. In the Senate, 23 yeas, 10 nays; in the Assembly, 70 yeas, 11 nays, 11 absent or not voting.

3 The case arose in Philadelphia County, where a colored woman brought suit against the Philadelphia and West Chester Railroad for damages which, she claimed, she sustained in being removed forcibly from one seat to another in the car.

4 February 13, 1867, see Documentary History II, p. 727; also see the resolutions of the Democratic Convention at Harrisburg, June 11, opposing any amendment to the State Constitution giving the right of suffrage to negroes and disapproving the Congressional policy of reconstruction, and especially the threatening messages of Congress to regulate the elective franchise in the State. See also the resolutions of the Republican State Convention at Williamsport, June 26, endorsing the Congressional amendment. Senate, 21 yeas, 11 nays; House, 62 yeas, 34 nays.

6 February 15, 1867, Documentary History, II, p. 731. In the Senate, 25 yeas, 1 nay; in the House, 77 yeas, 15 nays.

THE SOUTH TAKES UP THE AMENDMENT.

306 State at this time was about to vote on a new constitution which omitted the word "white," in defining the qualifications of electors. Massachusetts ratified in March,1 and Nebraska, the youngest State in the Union, on the fifteenth of June, a year lacking a day from the time when the amendment was adopted by Congress.2

During the year in which the amendment had been before the States twenty-two had ratified which included all the old free States, and Tennessee, West Virginia and Missouri, the latter the first of the slaveholding States to adopt emancipation. Opposition in the North had gone practically no further than the protests of Democratic State conventions and minority votes in legislatures, but in the fifteen Southern States-almost one-half of the Union-the amendment had met with a different reception. The legislature of Georgia assembled in November and listened to the governor's message, the most important part of which related to the amendment. Why, inquired he, should the legislature vote on its adoption? The State had no voice in its preparation. Georgia was as distinctly and positively secured the one right as the other by the Constitution. Had its representatives and those of other States in the South aided in giving form to the amendment it might have come before the legislature "a less obnoxious thing." The policy of Congress seemed to be,

1 March 20, 1867, Documentary History, II, p. 735; see also the platform of the Republican State Convention at Worcester, September 12, endorsing the reconstruction policy of Congress and characterizing President Johnson as "a dangerous and desperate man;" see the resolution, somewhat to the contrary, of the Democratic Convention, at Worcester, on the 14th of October. Vote, in the Senate, 27 yeas, 6 nays; in the House, 197 yeas, 29 nays.

2 For this ratification, see Documentary History, II, p. 739. The fourteenth amendment was known as House Roll, No. 8; the vote in the House was 26 yeas and 11 nays; in the Senate, 8 yeas and 5 nays,

first, to push through the amendment without the aid of the South, and then say to its people, "Accept it or take the consequences." Representation was a material part in the process of passing the amendment; its omission made it "unconstitutional, null and void." If the States especially affected by it refused their assent, it could not be adopted without excluding them, and placing its ratifica tion upon the votes of three-fourths of the States dominant for the time being. If the purpose of the amendment was to exclude the Southern States from Congress indefinitely, the menace would suggest its prompt rejection. Hostilities had terminated; "it was right and proper that the previously resisting States should, in the most equivocal and formal manner, abandon resistance" and "do whatever was necessary and proper to place themselves in Constitutional relations" with the Government. Georgia had already done this and the legislature should act on the amendment "with the same intelligent judgment and unflinching firmness they would have exercised when in full connection and in an unambiguous position." The spirit of the proposed measure met with prompt resistance.

The two Houses appointed a Joint Committee, which reported on the ninth. If Georgia, so ran its report, was not a State composing part of the Federal government, amendments to the Constitution could not properly be brought before its legislature. If it was a State and a part of the Federal Government, then the amendments had not been proposed according to the requirements of the Constitution, but in such a manner as forbade the legislature to discuss their merits "without an implied surrender of the rights of the State." A long discussion of federal relations followed, tending to establish two propositions, that Georgia was a State in the Union co-equal with any of the others, and, therefore, entitled to the same

308

ATTITUDE OF NORTH CAROLINA.

rights and privileges; and, that the amendment had not been proposed in either of the methods which the fifth article of the Constitution required. The conclusion of the whole matter was a resolution to decline to ratify, which was adopted unanimously by the Senate, and almost so by the House.1

The message of Governor North to the legislature of North Carolina, which assembled at Raleigh on the twentieth of November, was hostile to the amendment and particularly to its clause on negro suffrage. The legislature refused to ratify. The reasons for refusal were given in the report on the amendment, made by the Joint Select Committee of both Houses on the sixth of December, and adopted by both a week later,2 and may be accepted as the opinion of the majority of the people of the Southern States, at this time, on the question of ratification. The committee held that the amendment had not been submitted in a constitutional manner, because North Carolina and her ten sister seceding States had been repeatedly recognized as States in the Union by all departments of the Federal Government, both during and immediately after the war. Congress had recognized them as States in the Union by the resolutions of July, 1861; by the act apportioning taxation among the States; by that assigning them their respective number of representa

1 The vote in the House was 132 to 2. The report of the committee is given in the Annual Cyclopaedia, 1866, pp. 352-353.

2 Report and resolution of the Joint Select Committee of both Houses of the General Assembly of North Carolina on the proposition to adopt the Congressional Constitutional amendment, presented by James M. Leach of Davidson, chairman, on the 6th of December, and adopted by both Houses on the 13th of December, 1866, Raleigh; William E. Pell, Printer to the State, 1866, 16 pages.

I am indebted to Professor Stephen B. Weeks of Washington, D. C., for the use of his copy of this report.

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